Managing separate familes in variable fonts

Hello, I am running into somewhat of a problem.

I have the following setup: Latin + Cyrillic in one glyphs file. In my exports, I have a list of instances with Remove Glyphs: script=cyrillic, these are my Latin exports. For the Cyrillic instances, I don’t have that parameter. Same for my variable font settings, so I have one Myfont Variable and one Myfont CY Variable setting.

So far, so good.

Problem is, when I export the variable fonts, I get all instances twice in the variable font, since I have one list of Latin and one list of (identical) Cyrillic instances in my glyphs file.

I tried working with a Glyphs Project, but I can’t figure out how to customise exports, it only exports OTFs (no variable fonts), and I would like to use my custom export plugin.

Any ideas? I would hate to have to manually edit my fvar and name tables.

I’ll have a deeper look. But from the top of my head, it would be the easiest to put the static Cyrillic instance into a project file. I have something in the works that should improve on this but that will not be available soon.

Yes, I set up a Glyphs Project file, but I have no control about exports there. If I click Export, it just exports a bunch of OTFs, not the variable font, and I cannot use my export plugin.

you can keep the two variable font settings in the main file.

Yes, that’s true. That would mean I use the Glyphs Project files to export the instances? Again, this is not possible, as there is no control at all about the actual exports, at least I can’t find any.

I faced the same problem recently.

Could it be possible to include only active instances in fvar ? Or add an CP for that ?

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This would be fantastic, and an acceptable fix (even though this would mean exporting each variable font setting separately). Some CP defining which instances get included in which variable font setting would be the best solution.

Hm? It has been working like this for a long time. Only active instances will be listed in the VF.

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Mmh, it’s seems to work, but I’m pretty sure I had this issue with a previous glyphs file.
I will investigate